Bio/CV

Tara Javidi received her BS in electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. She received her MS degrees in electrical engineering (systems) and in applied mathematics (stochastic analysis) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Tara Javidi was an assistant professor at the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle. In 2005, she joined the University of California, San Diego, where she is currently the inaugural holder of Jerzy (George) Lewak Chair and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with a joint appointment in Halicioglu Data Science Institute. In 2012-2013, she spent her sabbatical at Stanford University as a visiting faculty. 

Tara Javidi’s research interests are in theory of active learning, information acquisition and statistical inference, information theory with feedback,  stochastic control theory, and wireless communications and communication networks. 

Tara Javidi is currently the Editor in Chief of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (2022/23/24). She is also serving on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society (elected 2018/19/20-2021/22/23, ex-officio 2024). She perviously served on the (guest) and associated editorial board of the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking, the IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering,  and IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 

Tara Javidi  is a Fellow of IEEE. She and her former PhD students are recipients of the 2021 IEEE Communications Society & Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award. Prof. Javidi was awarded University of Michigan ECE’s 2021 Distinguished Educator Award for her excellence in information and system theory education.  She also received a 2020 HDSI Fellowship. Tara Javidi was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2017/18) as well as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society (2019/2020).  She also received the 2018 and 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Award for her contributions to wireless technology. Tara Javidi was a recipient of the National Science Foundation early career award (CAREER) in 2004, Barbour Graduate Scholarship, University of Michigan, in 1999, and the Presidential and Ministerial Recognitions for Excellence in the National Entrance Exam, Iran, in 1992. In addition to numerous contributed and invited talks, she was a tutorial speaker at various international and prestigious conferences: International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks (CROWNCOM) 2010, ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (Mobihoc) 2013, International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT) 2014,  IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2016, and International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2019).

At the University of California, San Diego, Tara Javidi is a a co-PI at The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale (TILOS), a founding co-director of the Center for Machine Intelligence, Computing and Security, facutlty director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship at UCSD, and the principal investigator of DetecDrone Project as well as founding CSO/CTO of Soter AI, a California startup using active machine learning and sensing to ensure monitoring of energy production and transportation facilities at scale. She is a faculty member of the Centers of Information Theory and Applications (ITA), Wireless Communications (CWC), Contextual Robotics Institute (CRI) and Networked Systems (CNS). She is also a founding faculty member  of Halicioglu Data Science Institute (HDSI) and an affiliate faculty member in the departments of Computer Science and Engineering as well as Ethnic Studies.  She served as the Chair of UCSD Division of Academic Senate (2021/22) where she previously served as the Vice Chair (2020/21).  She received the 2021 University of California Academic Council Chairs Award for Mid-Career Leadership which honors a UC faculty member who has demonstrated outstanding and creative contributions that impact faculty governance as well as exceptional promise in serving the Academic Senate and working across the university’s many and diverse stakeholders. 

Tara Javidi is also passionate about inclusion and diversity at the institutions of higher education as well as in engineering profession. Since joining UCSD in 2005 till 2018, she was the faculty advisor for SWE@UCSD (UC San Diego Chapter of Society of Women Engineers). In 2010, she worked with UCSD student chapters of NSBE UCSD (UC San Diego Chapter of National Society of Black Engineers) and SHPE UCSD (UCSD Student Chapter of Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) to help Jacobs School of engineering establish IDEA Engineering Student Center with the mission to foster an inclusive and diverse community, increase retention and graduation rates, and promote a sustainable culture of academic excellence among URM engineering students at UC San Diego. From 2010 till 2014, she served on the Jacobs School of Engineering Dean's Diversity Advisory Council. In 2013/14, she chaired the UCSD Faculty Senate Committee on Equity and Diversity. She was also the UCSD faculty representative at the UC System-wide University Committee on Affirmative Action & Diversity (UCAAD). In 2015, Tara Javidi was awarded a UC San Diego Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action and Diversity Award  in recognition of her mentorship of the underrepresented minority students and postdoc scholars (see this video about the award). She has also been very active within IEEE Information Theory Society as a Diversity and Inclusion Committee member (Feb 11, 2018 - Dec 31, 2019),  Student and Outreach Subcommittee member (Jan 1, 2015 - Dec 31, 2016), and Women in the Information Theory Society (WITHITS) officer (Jan 1, 2013 - Dec 31, 2014). 

For more information: see my complete (but often outdated!):